1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to electronic design automation (EDA). More specifically, this disclosure relates to shaping integrated with power network synthesis for power grid alignment.
2. Related Art
Advances in process technology and a practically unlimited appetite for consumer electronics have fueled a rapid increase in the size and complexity of integrated circuit (IC) designs. The performance of circuit design flows is very important because it reduces the time to market for IC designs.
Shaping refers to a step in a circuit design flow in which the shapes, sizes, and/or locations of physical partitions (also known as blocks) in the circuit design are determined. A power grid (PG) refers to the circuitry that supplies power and ground voltages to circuit elements in a circuit design. Power network synthesis (PNS) refers to a step in a circuit design flow in which the PG is created for the circuit design.
In a typical circuit design flow, shaping is performed much before PNS. This makes it very difficult to create a PG network that is consistent with the shapes, sizes, and locations of the physical partitions that were determined during shaping.